Re: Looking for LCD display with serial interface.

Anton,

Take a look at

The only problems might be in the graphics libraries, but the image buffer is mapped directly into memory space... you should be able to find a number of open-souce code that allows you to draw lines/circles by twiddling bytes.

Get a used laptop.

This is more expensive than a used laptop.

Thanks for all the responses so far. I must say that I am quite surprised at the lack of these type of products. In essence I am looking for the equivalent of an ANSI terminal, that uses an LCD in stead of a CRT, without the keyboard. The asked for graphics capability would be a bonus. There are a fair number of development type boards, mostly ARM or x86 based that has an LCD display as well. It is not a big issue for me to actually have to write some terminal emulation code, I just thought it would be easy to find something that I do not need to write some of the code myself.

Unfortunately a used laptop as suggested would not survive long in the environment it will be used. I will be using a laptop running Terra Term Pro or similar for the development, but for the actual test system I need somthing a bit more robust.

I wish the LCD manufacturers could define a standard interface so that one can easily use these displays even with small MCUs such as AVR, PIC and 8051s.

Regards Anton Erasmus

I think there is an inherent problem, if you want RS232, in that the speed of the RS232 interface would limit the speed of the graphics. Possibly a sufficiently clever protocol could mitigate this, maybe something like VNC?

Didn't VT220 have some simple protocols for drawing graphics, such as circles, boxes, lines etc. If you can find a VT220 emulator, you could use an industrial PC with lcd-screen, and run it on that. I think you can get these for $2000-3000 and they are suitable for somewhat rough environments.

-- Thanks, Frank Bemelman (remove 'x' & .invalid when sending email)

Sorry, I thought it was $299. Correction, get it new low end laptop.

He only wants one.

He wants it for display of testing result. I don't think he wants to do road testing.

Perhaps for other users, but not for him, not in this case.

Anton,

Again, without knowing more about your specific application (power/reliability/size constraints), it's hard to know what specifically would match your needs. But if it's the development effort (for a 'development board' like the SLC) that concerns you, feel free to drop me an email at the address above.

And this isn't meant to be a sales pitch at all... our 'targeted' customers are OEM guys that integrate these into their products... but even if it's just a one-shot deal, we should be able to work out a pretty simple serial-> terminal emulation on QVGA version for you. If nothing else, we'd get to add it to our collection of sample programs.

I believe he wants it to display test data. Read his post from today responding to Frank Bemelman. So Lewin's point to use a crusty old laptop makes a lot of sense.

I believe you're thinking of the VT240. See:

Best Regards John McCabe

To reply by email replace 'nospam' with 'assen'

Much more pleasant to look at than a real vt240 :-)

Best Regards John McCabe

To reply by email replace 'nospam' with 'assen'

Maybe RIP would do what you want. Ah, the old days of BBSs...

BTW, what is the survivability issue with a laptop, exactly? The hard drive? You don't need to use a hard drive...

I think this is the normal chicken/egg situation. People do not use it, because it is not available. And it is not produced/designed because there is no preceived need. I think the people who need this type of fairly slow graphics display for graphs etc., probably use embedded PCs with LCD display and software such as LabView. I presume one would also find this type of thing in the PLC world. Unfortunately my budget does not stretch nearly far enough to go the PLC route.

Regards Anton Erasmus

Actually I think you're quite right here, your "RS232 graphics terminal" would be fast enough for many things and quite a useful thing.

There aren't any colour LCDs with built in controllers, so you are probably talking about a fairly powerful micro/controller combination. A GUI usually takes 10x the computing power of the rest of an embedded application, so you may as well program the whole thing on the "lcd controller". You are then back to an "embedded PC" type of beast.

"Anton Erasmus" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

IP65. What you want is an industrial PC, panel PC, with touchscreen. Anything less is a guaranteed road to disaster. Spend the $4000 ;)

For the prototype you can use the salesmanagers' laptop, he doesn't know what to do with it anyway.

-- Thanks, Frank Bemelman (remove 'x' & .invalid when sending email)

All of a sudden that $700 SmartLCD-Color isn't such a laughable idea after all ;)

I don't know if Anton needs a $4k industrial PC. Doesn't sound like he's going to be running peripherals that'd need the full architecture. Nor is he going to be running the PC-class applications. All he wants is to dump some text and simple graphics on the screen.

I think a SBC w/ LCD is the way to go. We've had a helluva time integrating with some of the QVGAs out there... definitely the biggest hassle of development. Triscend chipsets look interesting and could definitely help get around that... but do you really need the flexibility of a SoC product and the ability to interface to many different LCD panels? Aren't you doing just one design?

Why not just choose one LCD controller + LCD and go with it? FWIW, we use the Epson-Seiko SED1375.

"Chon Tang" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com...

Yes, but is that IP65 ?

-- Thanks, Frank Bemelman (remove 'x' & .invalid when sending email)

message news:...

so

I still have my Timex Sinclair.

Anton Erasmus wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

IMO do some RS-232 interfaced HMIs (Human Interface Units - quaint!) which sound like what you are looking for. They are designed for factory environments and also to be connected to several different types of PLCs, so they can use an assortment of protocols. You program the beast with some free software to get the display that you want. There are various models ranging from very basic mono ones up to colour touch-screens. None are very cheap, but no industrial control stuff is! They appear to be cheaper than most of the competition though.

"John McCabe" wrote

Dunno--think I'd prefer the VT!

Boring, by comparison, but much less obnoxious, IMO, than that partic- ular induhvidual. There are plenty of other ladies that would inspire me to quite the opposite reaction, of course.